


Somewhere

by miasma



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, F/M, M/M, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 09:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/938355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miasma/pseuds/miasma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No, Cas doesn’t mind mowing the lawn. Set in the early 80s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Twist and Shout](https://archiveofourown.org/works/537876) by [gabriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabriel/pseuds/gabriel), [standbyme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbyme/pseuds/standbyme). 



> References to Twist and Shout are present, though not all the same things happened in this universe.  
> Castiel/Dean is only implied.

>   
>  He would not stay for me and who can wonder?  
>  He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.  
>  So I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder,  
>  And went with half my life about my ways.  
> 

-A.E. Housman

 

She got up as she did most mornings. She kissed his cheek and pushed off the heavy covers, dragging her feet through the hall to the kitchen. She tied her apron in the back and then remembered she had to get the mail and newspaper and milk. They lived in one of the last neighborhoods in California to still get milk delivered at the doorstep, and it was only because of a nearby farmer who was dedicated to the old-fashioned ways.

She waved to the milkman, stooping to pick up the jars.

Growing up, her mother didn’t cook the eggs in milk. But he likes them that way, so she makes a separate set of scrambled eggs sans milk for herself. Or, she’ll do that soon. After she gets his breakfast ready.

It’s Saturday. Her day of the week.

“Marie . . .” she hears him say behind her, irritation in his gravelly morning voice. “I told you. I can make my own breakfast.” The camera cuts to him as he stands in the doorway, a mess that’s almost attractive.

But he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get what it means to be a good wife and bring in your own money. He makes good money—but with her job she can buy them better clothes and fancier shoes. And she liked that—having nice things. Working for them. But he still has old-fashioned ideas.

“I like to,” she says quietly, smiling over the bacon and potatoes. “Besides, you’re a man. You’re not supposed to cook.” She says it jokingly, and, after a moment, she processes and comes to a halt, her wooden spoon hovering over the eggs. It’s the 80s, Maria.

“Like how you’re not supposed to go to work?”

She rolls her eyes. “I know, I know. Honestly, what I’m really afraid of,” she says, turning to him and raising an eyebrow, “is you setting the house on fire again.”

His shoulders fall with a sigh. “Marie—” he begins tiredly. She always brings that up playfully, but he doesn’t appreciate the sentiment.

“Oh! Before I forget,” she starts, “Can you mow the lawn today?” She sets his plate on the table, but he hesitates for a long, awkward moment before his shoulders slump and he sits down.

“Yeah.” He rubs his eyes. “Of course.”

After she makes her own eggs, she sits down across from him, even though he’s already cleared his plate.

“I’ll clean up.” He’s already at the sink, so he might as well.

She rubs her hands together nervously. A knee-jerk reaction. _You don’t have to do that._ She shakes her head, chiding herself, and she smoothes out her apron, kisses him on the cheek with her arms around his waist, and says, “Thank you.” And not in the way that she says it most of the time. Like to the clerk that just checked her out at the store. That’s a different sort of ‘thank you.’ Not the kind you say to your parents when they buy you your first car. Not even the sort of thanks you give to your best friend when she lends you money for school.

A ‘thank you’ more like the way you say _I love you_ when you really mean it. 

She can hear him smile. He does that thing where he breathes through his nose when he grins, like a quiet snort, and since they don’t have kids (yet), it’s impossible not to hear that in the quiet calm. And it’s one of those moments where, despite all the pain she’s gone through in her life, this is enough to balance everything out.

They both suddenly turn to look at the clock, the same thought entering their minds at the same moment.

“Go get ready,” he says with a smile, nodding his head in the direction of the bedroom. She kisses him on the lips before untying her apron and hanging it on its peg.

-|-

And now her hair is clean and up, molded and sprayed into shape. She started doing it this particular way when he showed her how. It took a few times, but he caught on to doing her hair, and he was better at it than she ever could be—and she’s being doing her hair since she was 13. About a decade of practice, and still . . .

He frowns when he focuses, and she’ll stare at the line between his brows in the mirror. 

Every once in a while, before a party or barbeque, she’ll ask him to because he’d never ask her himself.

But she won’t tell anyone that. And she’s not sure why. It’s just some unspoken thing: you can’t talk about it. She just knows it would mean something different to someone else.

She doesn’t tell anyone about a lot of things he does. And while him doing her hair shouldn’t be a secret because it means nothing—there are other things. Things that mean something but she doesn’t know _what_. Like how he stares at her lingerie even when she’s not wearing it, when he thinks she’s not around—which isn’t strange in and of itself. But when he turns away from the silent exchange with her garters, he frowns at the ground like there’s something he can’t understand. It’s the troubled look on his face. It’s all off.

She’s grabbing her purse, looking around the house for her fiancé to kiss him goodbye. She calls for him, but there’s no answer.

-|-

 

He puts the dishes aside to dry and figures he might as well start mowing the law. He just wants to get it over and done with.

But that’s not true.

He can hear Maria singing to herself as she gets ready in the bathroom. It almost sounds like _Funky Town_. And then the record player starts, and he can hear Rick Springfield.

_I'll play along with this charade_  
That doesn't seem to be a reason to change  
You know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute  
I wanna tell her that I love but the point is probably moot  
'Cause she's watching him with those eyes  
And she's lovin' him with that body, I just know it!  
And he's holding her in his arms late, late at night. 

He remembers meeting her on the beach. It was summer and it was Coronado. Then she liked chocolate ice cream but now she likes strawberry. And he knew, scooping up the creamy brown mess with his hands from the sand and tossing it into the trash, that he’d end up with her.

And he’s known since then how she deserves better than a man who mows her lawn and cleans her plate.

At least a man who isn’t a liar.

_“Can you mow the lawn today?”_

He felt his entire body tense, because it was Saturday. He got up early every Saturday to see off his wife and stare out across the street. The newest neighbors moved in a year ago. Lisa and Dean. They’re engaged, too.

Cas had talked to him at dinner parties, and they both had to improvise on occasion. Everyone could tell that they knew each other from the moment they stood face to face. They modified their story on the fly, and they didn’t slip up. They could manage that because, really, things are normal now. There’s nothing left. The memories have dried up. Most of what hurt so much before has just been . . . forgotten.

But there are little things. Like how he sometimes thinks of someone other than _her_ while they are having sex. How he sometimes drinks an extra glass of wine on Saturday afternoons because it helps him remember more clearly the days in high school—nights spent smoking under football field bleachers—

So he might’ve done a not-so-great job on the dishes. He’ll come back to them later. After she leaves and after he mows the lawn. He slips on his clothes, not bothering to look at what he’s putting on, and forgets the front door is meant to be pulled, not pushed.

He grunts in frustration, straightening his shirt, and his heart bottoms out. Across the street and to the left—no one’s out. Not a single person—

“Morning, Cas!” Rob next door to the right is out watering his oleander shrubs. He was in his late forties and he owned a gas station. 

“Morning,” Cas says with an acknowledging nod, his breath heavy and hollow.

“You alright there? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Cas laughs airily, raising his eyebrows, “I’m all right, Rob. Thank you.”

Cas grabs the hose and drags it across the lawn to his white hydrangea which line the walkway. But first, he fumbles with it like he can’t get it to work, groaning and mumbling and shaking his head. He tells Rob, that, no, he doesn’t need help—he’s got it. Rob soon says, “Bye,” waving the newspaper, and returns inside to get a cup of coffee and do his crossword puzzle.

Cas counts seconds to busy his mind. Ten seconds inhaling, ten seconds exhaling. A door opens not too far away, and we see the I-can-count-the-pores close up on his face as he holds his breath and—

-|-

“There you are,” she says, coming down the porch steps. “What's the hurry? You have all day, babe.” But he doesn’t turn around, and he doesn’t say a word. He just stands there, watering the same spot despite it being fairly saturated. 

“Cas?” she says, a strange, irrational fear zipping through her. With her fitting pencil skirt and kitten pumps, she slowly treads the lengthening cement pathway. She tries to smile, but knows it’s only to reassure herself that everything is okay. It has to be. He’s just daydreaming. Cas, always with his head in the clouds. 

And even if something feels off, she doesn’t worry herself much over it. Feelings like that just happen sometimes—and they mean nothing. She doesn’t think she believes in intuition—that and other silly superstitions.

She arrives bedside him, about to tell him he’s going to drown the plant to death, but instead she follows his gaze. This time, the camera swoops around with Maria as she turns, swiveling with her heart, capturing the essence of her smile as it falls away.

-|-

It’s a beautiful summer day. It has the haze that colors treasured memories. Warm and yellowish.

And he’s remembering things he hasn’t remembered in years. Places and people and whispered somethings. The feeling and sound of silk against the covers. The snap of panties and a new record spinning.

Looking back, he wonders if he knew then that it would all crumble. That life would chew them up and spit them back out as two separate entities with parallel lives the never crossed or intertwined. That never _touched_.

And what he’d give for a touch.

Maria’s standing in his peripherals. He knows. He’s just still coming back to the present. 

Dean’s mowing the lawn, stuck in his own mind, with a deep-set, determined frown. He does it every Saturday morning.

A long time ago they once talked about living on an island by themselves. Out away from everything. There’s no island—there never was. But there’s an ocean between the two of them. He wonders why people want what they know they can’t have. It doesn’t seem to have a point.

But he keeps staring because the minutes are literally hours. Like he’s got all the time in the world to finally turn to Maria and tell her to have a good day.

Suddenly we’re somewhere else. Some _time_ else. A flashback scene. They’re smoking on Cas’ front porch while Maria’s at work and Lisa’s listening to a lecture. Dean pulls out his pack of Winstons. He’s the only one in the neighborhood still buying them. All the other guys switched to Marlboro. They’ve been smoking together every day for a couples weeks. But they haven’t talked much. Until—

“Man, this ain’t half bad. I thought it’d be . . . but—it’s not. We can just sit here and enjoy a good smoke. Like two ol’ pals should.”

Cas nods, blowing out another puff. And it’s a nice day, and everything about it is enough. “Yes. It’s good to hear your voice again, Dean,” he says like he’s talking about the weather, but that’s not how it sounds.

Dean’s jaw tenses and he puts out his cigarette. “Don’t start that.”

“I don’t mean to sound—“

“I know, Cas!” Dean says gruffly. He rubs an eye and softens his tone. “I know.”

They don’t smoke together so often as they used to.

-|-

She turns back to Cas, her vision blurry. “I’ve gotta go, okay?” she says quietly.

He nods, hearing her, looking to her. She watches as he comes back into himself. “Have a good day,” he says.

His eyes dart back to Dean briefly, who’s putting the lawn mower away. She looks, too, for a long time, seeing _everything_. Nothing about the neighborhood looks the same. Someone changed the setting on her lens and the saturation is out of whack. The pressure of gravity is fluctuating. She can feel the crust of the earth floating of its own accord on the magma miles deep. The slight breeze is completely gone, and she bows her head.

When she gets upset, she bites her lip or her cheek or a finger or clenches her hands until her nails leave marks on her palms. Anything to distract her mind. To pull her away for a moment so can compose herself.

She opens the car door and waves to him. He waves back. Dean, across the street, mistakes the wave as being toward him, and when Cas notices he smiles like she hasn’t seen him smile. Ever.

She’s not going to pretend. She’s not going to crawl into herself a little more each day—she’s not going to let her heart plop out and roll away every time her Cas catches a glimpse of his neighbor. She’s not going to think about how they used to _know_ each other when they were younger.

And she’s not going to cry. She wishes she could. It hurts enough. But it’s something too heavy to house within her, so it just rests on her back, her heartbeat even to the pulse but erratic inside her ribcage.

Because, getting back in the car, she just sits. He turns off the water, fumbling mindlessly with the hose. He walks to hose back to its place on the side of the house, staring over his shoulder at Dean, who’s going back inside.

But that look was different. His eyes were open with intent and purpose and a hunger like she’s never known in anyone. But he wasn’t looking at _her_. And just to know that she couldn’t have him—could never have that look . . . he had love when he looked at her—a love with a steady rhythm, a dull thrumming that was constant—but it never looked like that.

And now, on the screen, flashes the montage.

He was _there_ with her all those times—sitting beside her as the hamburgers grilled and the neighbors’ children screamed, running across the yard; he was there when he kissed her into the mattress—when he pressed into her; he was there when her mother died. Not just standing and playing a part—he was _there_ , body and soul. More often than most men were, everyone informed her. She couldn’t have asked for more in a man than what he gave her—she knew. She knew better than those who told her so.

He’s always _there_ , even if his mind sometimes wanders somewhere else.

She’ll never have all of him because of that. But maybe, somehow, it’ll be enough.

-|-

Cas drags out the lawn mower, hearing her car start. He watches her pull away.

Over the years, he’d grown to love her more than he knew he could. As real and as deep as he ever loved—but it was different from how he had loved before. The _before_ roams about in the back of his mind, floating off in the distance, like an island out across the water. And sometimes his mind wanders somewhere else. Someplace where he can have everything he can’t—and, somehow, it’s never enough.


End file.
